


The Ones Left Behind

by Zzxya



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zzxya/pseuds/Zzxya
Summary: When the battle is over and the hero has won, when the sun shines and ballads are sung, when a new legend is born – a savior, amiracle– no one spares a thought for the ones they left behind.
Relationships: Anders/Male Hawke
Kudos: 9





	The Ones Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> I know this fandom is 10 years dead but I just finished all of the games about a month ago and this scene wouldn’t leave me be so now that you’re here you get to be sad with me. Also, for the record none of this reflects my canon playthrough. Like at all.

Anders knelt in the tiny garden of their shabby little hut and plucked a particularly thick stem of elfroot from the mud with a disgruntled sigh. The elfroot had been doing well this season, but if the last few stems of the harvest got as thick as this one they wouldn’t be potent enough for his potions. The nearby villagers always seemed to be bashing their limbs into things they _shouldn’t_ or dropping things on said limbs or smashing them between Maker knows what, but despite how exasperating it was healing kept his hands and mind busy, reminded him of old times he had no right to reminisce.

How long had it been?

 _Maker_ he’d lost count of the months.

Their little corner of the Korcari Wilds wasn’t exactly privy to the latest gossip, news, or _any_ form of information that wasn’t already months behind current events. It was one of many prices they’d been forced to pay in the aftermath of Kirkwall. While it seemed bearable at the time that was before Hawke left to aid a _Chantry initiated organization_ in the middle of a mage-templar war _they started._

The sinister voice that always whispered he started never relented, had only grown louder in Hawke’s absence despite his contrary pleas.

Last he heard the Wardens were somehow caught up in this mess – more than they had been previously at least – but given the incessant, ominous presence that nearly made him _ache_ to climb down to the Deep Roads one final time, Anders could have guessed that much. He supposed he was fortunate enough to have Justice to block the false Calling out of his waking thoughts. There was a bloody battle at Adamant Fortress in the Western Approach but that was as much information the villagers had to give.

That had to have been months ago now.

Every morning he would leave the barely-standing walls of their hut, the one Hawke had built with his own hands over a year ago now, tend to the garden, heal the wounds of the local villagers some miles off, and return, all the while trying to keep his eyes from straying to some far off road or the distant horizon too often. For all his attempts at subtlety the villagers shot him pitying looks more often than he cared to admit, though thankfully they never gave voice to their well-meaning pity.

It was this habit, one he’d made no attempt to break despite all the pain and heartache it weighed on him, which allowed him to see the figure of a man on horseback cresting a hill off in the distance. His heart, suddenly very full and very heavy though he long thought it empty and void, leapt into his throat as he dropped his basket and ran.

It could have been a mercenary. It could have been a Templar.

It could have been _Hawke_.

But as the two closed in on each other Anders could see that it _wasn’t_ Hawke and his heart suddenly turned to lead in his chest. It was _Alistair_ , of all people. The Maker had such a cruel sense of humor, to send the only ghost from his past that _wouldn’t_ be merciful enough to end his suffering right there on the spot.

He had so many questions – how did he find Anders? What happened at Adamant? Had Corypheus truly returned?

But the only question to slip past his lips, between heaving, near-hysterical breaths, was the only question that mattered.

“Where’s Hawke?”

His voice broke on the last syllable, all the emotions he buried deep for months resting unsteadily on one name. Alistair, never really the bigger man, moved to dismount his horse so they were on even ground and – presumably – to steel himself for whatever news he had to bring of Hawke’s delayed return. Surely the Inquisition still needed him, surely Varric had convinced him to stay – to help pick up the pieces of this mess they created, surely he was –

Alistair turned to face him, more resolute and steely than Anders had ever seen him. Their eyes met, and in that moment, Anders entire world shattered.

No, no, no, _no, no, no…_

Not him. Not the only person that mattered, not the only thing good, the only _light_ amidst the darkness of this wretched and unfair and cruel and _miserable_ world.

Not Hawke.

Not _Garett._

He couldn’t breathe – couldn’t think, couldn’t do a _damn_ thing except clutch his chest where the lead ball that was once his heart had stopped beating, frozen and torn and shattered all at once. His knees gave out; they clearly could not support the weight of a dead man and his leaden heart, his eyes burning as he gasped for air that would not fill his lungs. His throat was raw and burned like his eyes, and his distantly realized it was because _he_ was screaming, a Maker awful sound that tightened his throat like a noose and carried into the humid, sunny evening air like the desperate throws of a dying animal.

He screamed and screamed, no sound loud enough to carry the weight of his grief, of his _loss,_ until his voice gave out and he could only hiccup and shudder violently, wracked with sobs that cut to his very core. Justice was silent, almost completely rescinded in the depths of Anders’ mind, grieving in his own different and complicated way. The void left by his rescinded presence was swallowed up by Anders’ black despair, since there was clearly no more room in his heart to carry its weight.

Memories surfaced unbidden. The memory of warm hands, an even warmer smile. The rich sound of boisterous laughter, tempered by neither time nor circumstance – often used as a defense mechanism, but every so often genuine enough to remind Anders of just how _beautiful_ it could be. Of hands, held against a warm, broad chest right above the heart; promises whispered between lips that trembled with their weight. Of tears, hot, ugly, and painful, sobbed into a sturdy shoulder that never flinched, never faltered, even when the shambles of everything he’d destroyed choked him like thorns buried in a cornfield. Of a man, whose love and devotion and kindness and _patience_ seemingly ran endless despite all of the injustices he faced throughout a life wrought with nothing but suffering and heartache and betrayal.

He didn’t know when – didn’t care when – Alistair caught him, presumably before he collapsed face-first in a hysterical heap into the mud of the Wilds. They both were on their knees, Alistair a pillar of support and Anders a broken man, reduced to nothing with a simple glance – a sadness and weariness and _heaviness_ that carried the sting of loss he knew intimately well. But this was a loss he had denied he would ever have to bear. At least not before his _real_ Calling came.

The sun had begun to creep slowly behind the trees and rolling hills by the time Anders’ eyes dried up – simply because there were no more tears he could humanly shed – and his body was only shaking instead of violently shuddering despite being exhausted from so much all at once. His breathing remained uneven and erratic, but the initial wave of overwhelming sadness and hysteria had given way to the hollow emptiness of love lost.

Alistair made no move to comfort him. He simply held his shoulders, kept him from completely collapsing, while he stared somewhere off into the Wilds as the minutes – hours? days? – passed. There was an understanding even in the impersonal way he supported Anders, something he never imagined he would feel from this Warden who was so vastly different himself, but the empathy was buried underneath a mask he had put on to steel himself from the inevitable display of grief, of pain, of heartbreak.

Alistair’s voice, though soft and tainted with a sorrow Anders had no mind to consider, cut through him as he spoke.

“He said … I’m sorry.”

Another wretched sob wracked his frame, his fingers curled like a lifeline in the chainmail of Alistair’s armor. A fresh wave of heavy grief washed over him once again, crippling him and dragging him down into a chasm of darkness. He went willingly, for there was nowhere else to go – no one’s arms to fall into after a particularly exhausting day, no one’s smile to wake up to in the soft morning light, no one’s steady hand to hold when the ruins of everything they’ve ever tried to defend came crashing down on them.

Alistair shifted to wrap an arm around Ander’s shoulders, pulling him into a hug that Anders curled into without a second thought. It wasn’t until he spoke again that Anders realized he had been crying too, quieter, softer, but the wetness in his voice was clear as sky above them.

“I’m sorry Anders. I’m sorry too.”


End file.
